Just a Conservative musing, raving, and joking

Is Green the New Blue?

July 20, 1933 – General Hugh S. “Iron Pants” Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration, declares the Blue Eagle to be the symbol of compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. The NRA was an agency created by Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal, modeled on the War Industries Board of WWI, and was a part of the continuation of the war time economy, shifted to combat the Great Depression.

The Act instituted codes of “fair competition” for a multitude of industries, set minimum wages, maximum hours, and a pricing floor for almost all goods. This intrusion into the workings of the free market, even though the different elements were “voluntary,” were partly responsible for prolonging the depression, as well as highly unconstitutional. Housewives were urged, pressured, and embarrassed into purchasing products only from companies displaying the Blue Eagle symbol. Slogans of “doing your part” and “Buy now under the Blue Eagle” were rampant.

In a fireside chat, even Roosevelt spread the propaganda

In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge on their shoulders to be sure their comrades do not fire on comrades, on that principle those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance.

Fortunately, the codes of conduct were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935, before they could be fully implemented, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. Unfortunately, the decision did not strike down the Act as unconstitutional, but as an improper delegation of legislative powers to the executive branch. That opened the door for many of the policies to be continued when enacted by Congress in 1936, 1938, and 1945.

This video by Jimmy Durante gives a small idea of the fascistic nature of the NRA, and the New Deal as a whole.

The New Deal changed our country’s direction hard left for all future generations. Obama and the Left have the potential to finish the job and completely convert our free republic to one form of statism or another. We find ourselves in a similar situation as the country did in 1933. While our recession is not as bad as the Great Depression, Obama and Congress are not done ensuring further economic collapse. The market control, and demonizing of capitalism is all to familiar to students of history. This quote from Rex Tugwell, one of FDR’s “Brain Trust” could have been stated today by, say, Barney Frank,

Unrestricted individual competition is the death, not the life of trade.

Fighting the current recession is not enough, however, to ensure mindless compliance with new, as yet unwritten policies. A war needs to be fought. Liberals have had a problem with actual war since WWI, so what has been necessary to forward their goals is a moral analog. Currently, there is no actual emergency to rally together Americans under a unified banner. One must be invented, and no better emergency could ever have been created than the “global catastrophe” of human-caused climate change. This time, however, the emergency is global.

A current search of Amazon’s children’s books for ‘climate change’ yields 1,302 results. It is fair to say that every child over 10 since 2006 has seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. We have multiple generations of citizen compliance officers and quasi-official government informants ready to turn in their neighbors and parents for using the wrong dishwasher detergent. Just Wednesday, the EPA kicked off yet another propaganda campaign targeting our children. From their press release:

With Earth Day only a few days away, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is kicking off the 2009 “Change the World, Start with Energy Star” campaign to educate kids and their families about how to save money and fight climate change through energy efficiency.

“People of every age have a part to play in confronting climate change,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Using Energy Star to cut electricity usage and costs, and educating young people and their families to make a difference — big or small — is how we make real progress.”

This year, EPA is partnering with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Parent-Teacher Organizations Today to work with America’s youth in the fight against climate change. Boys & Girls Clubs of America will engage its young members in service projects to educate youth and their communities about the benefits of energy efficiency.

“As an organization with more than 4,300 community-based Clubs, we are genuinely concerned about the environment and our responsibility to preserve and protect it,” said Boys & Girls Club of America President/CEO Roxanne Spillett. “We look forward to working with EPA to educate and encourage the young people we serve to be more energy efficient and environmentally conscious, identifying ways they can make a difference in their respective communities.”

Propaganda has been everywhere for years heralding the green triangle as a mark that a company “cares about the environment.” The details are not really important, only compliance with the currently loose definitions of “environmentally safe” and “Earth friendly.” Entire grocery store chains have sprouted up to serve this cause, and are doing quite well as housewives are again shamed for not using “green” products from companies displaying the symbol.

Just as with the Blue Eagle, companies not displaying the green triangle of compliance are getting no sympathy from the press, Democrats, a good chunk of Republicans, consumers, and especially the government. Those alive during the Depression may remember the case of Jacob Maged, a dry cleaner jailed for three months over his five cent price cut to clean a suit. Similar legal problems are just around the corner for ordinary citizens.

There are currently hundreds of cases worldwide for companies, and people defying seemingly silly environmental ordinances. Our own states sue U.S. auto makers and power companies. Businesses in the U.K. were fined £3.5 million, and owners or managers spent over 11 years combined in prison – in 2006 alone – for breaking toughened British environmental laws. With the EPA poised to clamp down emissions, it will be just a matter of time before someone is arrested for using an incandescent light bulb. In a BBC piece released today, even your diet may become illegal as obesity rates are tied to Global Warming

We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.

And as before, ordinary citizens are taking matters into their own hands. Just last week, over a hundred people were arrested in the U.K. for attempting harm to the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, one of Britain’s largest plants.

It will be almost impossible to connect all the dots, so I’ll leave that up to you and your comments. What is perfectly clear, however, is that we are hurtling full-speed toward some brand of statism, possibly a new brand of fascism. And now that these dots have been connected, it will be easier to recognize the propaganda of the Green Triangle, the new Blue Eagle.